Study: Competence is easy to Fake

[General Zod]

Linky

Bosses may be an overbearing breed, but more often than not, you've got to admire their business chops. Wouldn't you love to have that same sense of competence and confidence, that ability to assess tough problems and reach smart solutions on the fly? Guess what? So would they. If you have ever suspected your boss might not actually be good enough at what he does to deserve the job in the first place, a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests you might be right.

Social psychologists know that one way to be viewed as a leader in any group is simply to act like one. Speak up, speak well and offer lots of ideas, and before long people begin doing what you say. That works well when leaders know what they're talking about, but what if they don't? If someone acts like a boss but thinks like a boob, is that still enough to stay on top? (See the best business deals of 2008.)

To determine just how easily an all-hat-no-cattle leader can take control of a group of coworkers, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, devised a pair of tests. Cameron Anderson, an associate professor of organizational behavior and industrial relations, along with doctoral candidate Gavin Kilduff, recruited a group of 68 graduate students and divided them into four-person teams. To eliminate the wild card of gender, the teams were all-male or all-female. Each of the groups was given the task of organizing an imaginary nonprofit environmental organization, with the group that did best — as determined by the researchers — winning a $400 prize. While the prize was real, the purported goal wasn't. What Anderson and Kilduff really wanted to see was how the alpha group members emerged. (See "How To Know When The Economy is Turning Up".)

The teams worked together for a fixed amount of time and after they were done, the members rated one another on both their level of influence on the group and, more important, their level of competence. The work sessions were videotaped and a group of independent observers performed the same evaluations, as did Anderson and Kilduff themselves. All three sets of judges reached the same conclusions: Consistently, the group members who spoke up the most were rated highest in such qualities as "general intelligence" and "dependable and self-disciplined." The ones who didn't speak as much tended to score higher in less desirable traits including "conventional and uncreative."

"More-dominant individuals achieved influence in their groups in part because they were seen as more competent by fellow group members," Anderson and Kilduff write. (See pictures of Steve Jobs on the job.)

But so what? Maybe they were actually more competent. Isn't it possible that people who talk more do so because they simply have more to contribute? To test that, Anderson and Kilduff ran a second study with a new team of volunteers in which the skill being tested was a lot more quantifiable than forming a nonprofit green group. This time it was math. (See entrepreneurs breaking ground in global business.)

Once again, the volunteers were divided into fours in competition for a $400 prize, but now their assigned task was to work as teams to solve computational problems from previous versions of the Graduate Management Aptitude Test (GMAT). Before the work began, the participants also informed the researchers — but not the other team members — of their real-world scores on the math portion of the SAT exam. When the work was finished, the people who spoke up more were again likelier to be described by peers as leaders and likelier to be rated as math whizzes. What's more, any speaking up at all seemed to do. Participants earned recognition for being the first to call out an answer, but also for being the second or third — even if all they did was agree with what someone else had said. Merely providing some scrap of information relevant to solving the problem counted too, as long as they did so often enough and confidently enough. (See TIME's photoessay "All Cubed In".)

When Anderson and Kilduff checked the team members' work, however, a lot of pretenders were exposed. Repeatedly, the ones who emerged as leaders and were rated the highest in competence were not the ones who actually offered the greatest number of correct answers. Nor were they the ones whose SAT scores suggested they'd even be able to. What they did do was offer the most answers — period.

"Dominant individuals behaved in ways that made them appear competent," the researchers write, "above and beyond their actual competence." Troublingly, group members seemed only too willing to follow these underqualified bosses. An overwhelming 94% of the time, the teams used the first answer anyone shouted out — often giving only perfunctory consideration to others that were offered.

Arguably, none of this comes as much of a shock — at least if you've been watching the news. You don't have to be a former homeowner burned by the housing fiasco or a blue-state voter screaming I told you so to agree that the way we pick our leaders is often based on something other than merit. That's not entirely bad, since no matter how competent bosses are, they still have to have the charisma and confidence to persuade other people to follow them. Whether they're leading from the Oval Office or the corner office, it's up to the rest of us to watch them closely and make sure they know where they're going.

I figured some people on here would find this interesting. It really confirms a lot of what some people might've suspected already; you don't actually need to be competent in order for people to think you are as long as you talk the most.

[Darth Wong]

I can't help but wonder how much this varies between disciplines. I'll bet that the students involved in this study were all MBA students. That field seems to generate a higher proportion of blowhard bullshit artists than any other field.

[erik_t]

As usual, XKCD shows us the way.

[Surlethe]

Split a series of one-liners to Testing. If you want to post, make it substantial.

Edit: On a suggestion, went ahead and split the responses to the HoS as an afterthought.

[Akkleptos]

Interesting little piece.

Nevertheless, "An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance" is a really old saying. So is "Style over substance". It's not as if it were an unknown phenomenon.

And it's not as if we didn't have Peter's Principle since the 60's to explain why incompetent people reach -and stay in- mid-level to high posts.

The Peter Principle is the principle that "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence." While formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1968 book The Peter Principle, a humorous treatise which also introduced the "salutary science of Hierarchiology", "inadvertently founded" by Peter, the principle has real validity. It holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their "level of incompetence"), and there they remain. Peter's Corollary states that "in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties" and adds that "work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence".

Actually, Lawrence J. Peter suggests the sufferers of Final Placement Syndrome many of the methods described in the article, so they can either effectively bullshit their way through and appear competent enough not to be fired, or stop caring about it completely (Total Irrelevantism).

I can't help but wonder how much this varies between disciplines. I'll bet that the students involved in this study were all MBA students. That field seems to generate a higher proportion of blowhard bullshit artists than any other field.

Then don't even look at the so-called social sciences field. Or Lacan's psychoanalisys. Or Derrida's philosophy, or Debray's rantings on philosophy, as evidenced by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont's Intellectual Impostures (Fashionable Nonsense in the US, I believe), at least when it comes to their use of Physics and Mathematical concepts. In those fields, it's relatively easy to pass for "competent".

Just as in that old movie, PCU I think it was called: "You can major in Gameboy if you know how to bullshit".

EDIT: URL and... sssstyle...!

[frogcurry]

I can't see this suggestion applying for a long period of time in a work environment where any sort of technical or professional competence is needed, only in a short term situation. Also, these people are of low life experience, they're grad students and so probably a bit naive. I would probably have been impressed by someone with the confidence in their answer to speak up in a group of strangers when I was back at uni as I was quite shy then, today I'd call bullshit a lot sooner and more forcefully as I've got better judgement and more self-confidence from working in a real job. Conversely, the bullshitters are probably a lot more inclined to go for in these cases, as they don't know better and don't see any downside. Its not the same when you're get fired if you can't live up to your responsibilities.

Theres an infamous case of someone pretending to be a senior engineer in the Aberdeen oil industry a while back (~ 5 years or so), he just faked his qualifications and got a ~£400- 500 / day job. He lasted about a month apparently before people got suspicous enough to ask about his qualifications. Although that doesn't surprise me, as if you're a senior engineer on the right project you can often pass all the engineering calcs on to the lower ranking engineers in your discipline and just do meetings, document checks, emails, etc. I've come to the conclusion that I need to get promoted to senior status ASAP, because the actual workload seems to go down the more senior the work you do.

[Akkleptos]

I can't see this suggestion applying for a long period of time in a work environment where any sort of technical or professional competence is needed, only in a short term situation.

True, when competence can be objectively evaluated, such as in results, quotas, etc. But when you are able to produce tens of papers, essays or even books about unfalsifiable stuff, or too cryptic to make sense of, in some fields the tendency is to say "oh, wow! I didn't understand this but it sounds brilliant. I'll say it is because I don't want to sound stupid". Of course, when this happens, it's usually a sign that the people who are supposed to evaluate competence have also reached their Final Placement -as per Peter's Principle- and are, thus, incompetent as well.

I've come to the conclusion that I need to get promoted to senior status ASAP, because the actual workload seems to go down the more senior the work you do.

Yes, but you're also -at least hypothetically- responsible for what all the people under you do. Hence the term "high-responsibility position".

[Uraniun235]

I've come to the conclusion that I need to get promoted to senior status ASAP, because the actual workload seems to go down the more senior the work you do.

That depends enormously on the organization itself. For example, I would never* want my boss's job - he spends a lot of time working late, he often has to deal with frazzled tempers from other people (whereas, if someone starts screaming at me, I can tell them to talk to my boss and then walk away... fortunately, this hasn't happened yet), he has to try and decide what the best use of resources is and then defend his decisions to his superiors. And he's not even on the union contract - his boss could fire him tomorrow, just because his boss didn't like his work any more.

So, yeah, there's some places where more seniority means less work, but there's also places where more seniority entails seriously more responsibility and work.



(*This isn't necessarily true. Some day in the future when I'm married and having kids, I may judge the additional pay - and the prestige it would lend my resume - to be worth the added stress and work, in order to better secure my family's future. But for now, I would firmly decline any offer to take the IT Director position.)

[Akkleptos]

For example, I would never* want my boss's job - he spends a lot of time working late, he often has to deal with frazzled tempers from other people (whereas, if someone starts screaming at me, I can tell them to talk to my boss and then walk away... fortunately, this hasn't happened yet), he has to try and decide what the best use of resources is and then defend his decisions to his superiors. And he's not even on the union contract - his boss could fire him tomorrow, just because his boss didn't like his work any more.

So true. In many cases, a higher position comes with a higher level of responsibility.

What's even more: a higher position frequently requires a different set of skills, some of which one might not have. For example, if you're a hands-on worker and a good one at using the tools, manipulating materials, imagining layouts etc; upon being promoted to -say- supervisor, you might have a hard time dealing with executives, handling problems amongst and with the workers you supervise (many of them former colleagues), planning and scheduling, etc. Not the same skills that made you elegible for promotion in the first place.

[Bedlam]

For example, I would never* want my boss's job - he spends a lot of time working late, he often has to deal with frazzled tempers from other people (whereas, if someone starts screaming at me, I can tell them to talk to my boss and then walk away... fortunately, this hasn't happened yet), he has to try and decide what the best use of resources is and then defend his decisions to his superiors. And he's not even on the union contract - his boss could fire him tomorrow, just because his boss didn't like his work any more.

So true. In many cases, a higher position comes with a higher level of responsibility.

What's even more: a higher position frequently requires a different set of skills, some of which one might not have. For example, if you're a hands-on worker and a good one at using the tools, manipulating materials, imagining layouts etc; upon being promoted to -say- supervisor, you might have a hard time dealing with executives, handling problems amongst and with the workers you supervise (many of them former colleagues), planning and scheduling, etc. Not the same skills that made you elegible for promotion in the first place.

This is what currently anoys me at work. I can be amazing at my job hugely productive and have greater knowledge of what I do than anyone else in the team and it wont get me a promotion. To do that I would have to apply for a job in another department doing something I have no experience and possibly apptitude at its crazy to me.

[Akkleptos]

This is what currently anoys me at work. I can be amazing at my job hugely productive and have greater knowledge of what I do than anyone else in the team and it wont get me a promotion. To do that I would have to apply for a job in another department doing something I have no experience and possibly apptitude at its crazy to me.

Man! Didn't you know? Friendly work advice, this time not from Lawrence J. Peter:

"Never be indispensable. An indispensable employee cannot be promoted"

[PeZook]

He can extort management for huge raises, though